What You Get When Life Is Hollow Poem by Dónall Dempsey

WHAT YOU GET WHEN LIFE IS HOLLOW

mother's biography
I meet myself in the index
...daughter of 110,112

I reach into my mother's head
letters reveal my dad
before he was my dad

my mother's diary
intimate details about dad
when he was just the other man

the man to be my dad
she leads him on
to my being...born

I know my conception
from the inside out
each intense intimacy

the kisses...the caresses
that go into the making of me
I feel like I steal myself

letter by letter
I attend my own
birth

finally I arrive
I dog-ear the diary
here I fall asleep

a movie flickers
my only reel memory
of the she...she used to be

my mother & her friends
all so original
I only an ordinary daughter

words
words catch me
as I fall through time

I grow up
through page after page
emerge in Chapter 21 as 21

letters & diaries
reveal me to myself
as my self

I wander about
the many rooms
of my mother's mind

finally I find
a self I can own
a me I can be